Nursery World - Read on

If parents cannot read or write, how can they support their children's learning? Judith Napier sees what's being done More than 35,000 people swamped the television station's switchboard after a show about a father who wasn't able to read his child a bedtime story. There could hardly be a more devastating illustration of the need for family literacy programmes.

More than 35,000 people swamped the television station's switchboard after a show about a father who wasn't able to read his child a bedtime story. There could hardly be a more devastating illustration of the need for family literacy programmes.

The National Literacy Trust (NLT) defines family literacy as any initiative that aims to improve the reading and writing of children by working with parents, as well as those that aim to improve parents' literacy too.

Parents rarely, if ever, admit to having literacy problems, feeling too embarrassed and perhaps fearing a return to the humiliation of their schooldays. The NLT emphasises the importance of a flexible approach that can reach parents in disadvantaged areas and also affluent middle-class children whose language development may be affected by spending their days with an au pair who is not fluent in English.

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